Jared Costa
Film Studies A2 Evaluation
With both these options you are meant to engage with the issues raised in FM1 in relation to the production of meaning and the study of film stylistics and theory.
I can undertake this task as an individual and it is advised that we do so, but if we work in a group then your production role within that group MUST be clearly defended and you will need to provide evidence of your contribution in terms of that role and you will be assessed on your performance in that role.
I am to develop a short sequence of film, 3-5 minutes long, with a chosen stylistics and genre of our choice. Within the choice we must use traditional codes and conventions. I must also create a storyboard, analyse film text and conventions.
This was my brief for my A2 Film studies, as mentioned above I had to create a storyboard, script and short film using a genre of my choice. To begin this process I felt as though I should first establish an idea.
This began with drafting up a list of different genres and ideas I could focus on, such included RomCom, Sci-Fi, Drama. I also had the idea to have a ghost in I felt this was a good way to stick to certain conventions which feature ghosts, two popular models for the ghost idea was in the from of M. Knight Shamaylan’s ‘Sixth Sense’ in which his ghosts appear to have a much more real appearance to them and in James Manos’ ‘Dexter’ Dexter is constantly visited by his deceased father, I have looked at this and analysed it on my blog noting how Manos doesn’t use any certain styles when it comes to conveying the ghost. This idea of a Romcom then developed into a drama because I looked at ‘Sixth Sense’ and ‘Dexter’ as an inspiration for my work.
After I had decided what genre I was doing I decided to research drama’s and their conventions. I discovered that drama’s rely on realistic characters and themes along with emotions which the characters have to try and overcome. I believe the story presented in this short film to have an issue which people can certainly relate too, it is a problem which could be called common, teenagers having to live with dread and a strong conscious after a dramatic event, and then the teenager must deal with this issue.
The audience I am looking at for my film will be around the 16 and above age line. The reason I chose this age line is because of my chosen genre. My chosen genre is Drama, Drama is a realistic genre or more realistic than the rest. Drama focuses around realistic characters with realistic problems, problems such as the drug addiction or religion. My film will follow the drama genre, which relies heavily on realistic characters and problems.
My original aims of my film was to create a sense of isolation for my character through use of cinematography another goal which I had hoped to achieve was to (using conventions) create a flashback through use of cinematography. I planned to create isolation through distanced wide shots, long shots and medium shots, shots like this would contain no one else in and often remain eerie and silent, something that I felt that I achieved. To create the flashback I took inspiration from ‘7 pounds’ directed by Gabrielle Mucino. This contains a similar story in which the character is haunted by problems in the past and his tragic deed is showed to us through a flashback he has. I felt this was particularly relevant as I too wanted to show my audience what had happened through use of flashback.
To gain a deeper understanding at dramas and conventions I analysed texts from ‘Sixth Sense’ looking at the use of sound, how Shamalyan uses ghosts as seemingly ordinary people, use of colour, something which I took note of as it was the colour for my girl ghost. I also looked at ‘Dexter’ and ‘7 pounds’ for information that I could use within my film.
After I had gathered my information I devised a basic story using Todorovs Narrative Theory.
Above is his theory. The theory as shown starts of with an Equilibrium, the Antagonist causes a disruption, in this instance I used the girl as the disruption, the protagonist then goes on a quest to try and fix the issue, the climax of the film is my final scene in which the protagonist walks into the street and its knocked down by a car, restarting the cycle, when the protagonist is killed this would be my Re-Equilibrium.
After devising a story I created a script and storyboard to go along with it.
To the left is a print screen of the script scene one, as you can see I have correctly labelled the scenes, the edits in the form of FADE IN/FADE OUT, who is talking and also what the actor should be doing. With this information and my storyboard I could combine them to film my film how I had planned it out, however I only used the script and storyboard as basic guidelines, the story still follows the events that unfold within these texts but I have changed/ adapted them as I went along, this could depend on availability of shot or if I preferred something different which perhaps looked better.
The filming was done on a FINEPIX S1500, FUJI FILM camera, during filming I also looked at the ending in particular the first ¾ of my film were the idea I wanted but I didn’t feel that the first ending was strong enough, in the original ending the girl ghost forgave his deeds after a confrontation with her, I didn’t feel that this followed the conventions of a drama, the idea of the ghost just seemed to cheap and convenient and wouldn’t be how a problem like this would be resolved. I felt that the new ending, in which he constantly sees the girl until he decides to take his own life was much stronger and realistic and seemed as mentioned before like something the audience could relate too.
Before filming I also looked at certain locations I wanted to use, within my script I have places such like the college which again I wanted to show an isolated character or one which was treat with disgust, this was shown in the bathroom scene early on. I also looked at places where the protagonist would walk and see the ghost, again an isolated location where there wouldn’t be many people.
Another thing I had to look at was the use of music, I wanted something more instrumental and less singing or at least dim the vocals down. I wanted something which would represent the emotions of the character through instrumentals and what vocal pieces I do have I wanted the lyrics to represent the character.
I could also use the green room to help make my film, this would come in useful depending on how I was to film the car crash scene, which I felt would be my most important sequence, in the end I decided that I would actually film the collision without the use of the green screen because it would look hard to piece them together and seem un realistic, a common problem when using the green screen, this meant that I had to think of an idea to get round the car crash scene whilst still making it believable.
There were also various problems I encountered whilst filming, sometimes the lighting would appear okay when actually filming but when you then upload it to the editing suite the quality would be poor and dark. This meant I had to do various re shoots, another problems is when you thought you had the perfect shot, then when you play it back find out there was something of inconvenience in the background, which again meant re shoots were necessary especially because I wanted my character to be isolated and alone in the shots and to have someone walking around in the background didn’t work.
As mentioned some shots were darker than anticipated however with the opening scene of my film it starts off dark, this scene was the only deliberate excessively dark scene I wanted, I decided this because of what is happening at this time, its at this point of the film that he has discovered that she is going to die and obviously this is an emotional, dark time.
After I had filmed everything I uploaded to the editing suite, through the editing suite I could edit my film so much, even the actual texture I could change. Through the editing software you could add textures to the video, giving it a sepia tint or black and white tint, this was easy to add and easy to remove due to the advance in technology and upgraded editing suites. As well as adding these blend modes you could also change the contrast of them, making them darker than they were when you began or even lighter, if you wanted you can add a tint over a certain segment of your video or the whole thing, our original plan was too add a tint over the whole thing however if a certain shot was darker than the other when you added a tint across the whole thing it wouldn’t work because certain shots would be darker. I experimented a lot with my film, especially when it came to textures, I mainly experimented with textures because of the flashback scene, I wanted to see if I should make the imagery perhaps fainted or add a shade over the sequence so that It looked more like a flashback perhaps a white tint or make the sequence brighter. I also looked at changing the texture when the protagonist would be in the same scene as the ghost girl so that it would act as a warning so that the audience would know.
As mentioned sometimes you could upload a shot and realise it is too dark when its actually up on the editing suite, however through Adobe Premiere you could change the brightness to make the shots more visible, however this did not always work because the whole thing would get brighter rather than just one aspect of the shot.
As filming and editing came to an end I began to ask my audience questions, because I had established a younger age audience of 16+ It was easy to get my information. I asked questions how they felt about the flashback and if they felt it worked, the majority did believe it to work well as I used the correct conventions, I felt that people didn’t really get the idea of the ghost girl, maybe thinking that I shouldn’t have used Shamaylan inspired ghosts but rather a more traditional type of ghost. I also had mixed to positive reviews about the car crash, I feel that people found it realistic especially because of the lack of equipment I had at my disposal. I also asked about the sense of isolation created by my main character, I think above average most people recognised this when watching and realised that this character had been isolated by himself. All of my audience feedback mentioned that my continuity editing was good and felt a sense of continuing motion throughout the whole film, especially the entering the car scene. I also gathered some information of an online polling system on blogger which had been going for a number of weeks which helped me gain more information I needed.
In conclusion I feel that my short film worked well, I think that over the course of filming my ideas continued to develop into a better idea and so on. Obviously events changed which meant filming had to be adjusted but I feel that I still managed to capture the general idea, this is also evident in my audience feedback which mention that I managed to really capture the car crash sequence and using the correct codes and conventions make a accurate flashback.
